Pinball Wars! The Long, Strange Legal Battle Over Pinball in Milwaukee

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Officials in New York City destroy a seized pinball machine. Milwaukee was one of many cities that banned the game.

Today, pinball is pretty much as far from the idea of “societal evil” as it gets. But this seemingly pedestrian game was once thought to be so threatening to young people that it was the focus of a two-decade battle by city authorities to minimize its wicked influence.

The first major pushback against the game came in the 1930s as the pinball was transformed from a parlor novelty to a commercially-viable, coin-operated phenomenon. Machines offered five balls for a penny and quickly became a popular form of cheap entertainment. Machines did not yet have levers, the only form of control a player had was in pulling back the “plunger” that launched the ball and hoping it landed in a high-scoring chute.

The alarm in Wisconsin was part of an overall movement towards the licensing of coin-operated machines. Pinball machines – with offers of prizes or cash for high scores – were particularly frowned upon, seen as little more than gambling machines. The Milwaukee Police Department warned that boys often used the game as a way to spend stolen coins. “Pinball machines don’t talk,” John Kenney, a probation officer, told the Milwaukee Journal. “Almost all of those taken to juvenile court on theft charges have played the machines.”

Local clergy warned that the machines taught young people to gamble and kept them from more important matters. “My most serious problem is with boys playing pinball. Boys with no money to waste, and hardly enough for lunch, are spending it in the machines,” said the Dean of the Milwaukee Boys’ Vocational School, adding that some girls had even turned to prostitution to earn money to play the games. “This is a terrible menace to our boys and girls.”

The police also warned that organized crime interests controlled the operation of these machines in Chicago and would soon advance to Milwaukee. Best to ban these games now, they urged to the common council, than to wait for the gangsters to move in. By 1936, it was estimated that pinball generated $2 million annually in Milwaukee, the racket dominated by local robbers and thugs.

In early 1937, the common council passed an ordinance banning pinball and other gambling machines. But a lawsuit by local pinball operators – it was estimated there were more than 4,000 pinball machines in the city – delayed implementation of the law. The law eventually went into effect, but there would be little enforcement of its ban on pinball machines, so long as the machines did not “pay out” in the way of prizes or cash.

In 1942, with a wartime drive against juvenile delinquency shaping policy, the common council revived the city’s pinball wars, issuing an order that the 1937 ordinance be enforced without exception. Days after the order, Chief of Police Joseph Kluchesky carried out a series of dramatic raids on taverns still harboring pinball machines. Hundreds of machines were seized, even those not in use and kept in areas inaccessible to the public. Meanwhile, the city attorney’s office, lacking the Chief’s vigor over the matter, refused to issue warrants unless the machines could be proven to be gambling devices. Kluchesky was not deterred and proposed holding a public bonfire to destroy the machines.

The fervor over the pinball law eventually subsided and police returned to only pursuing cases in which the machines were used for gambling. The MPD’s “pinball detail” became one of the least-popular beats in the department, with plainclothes men going on three-month undercover assignment to root out illegal machines. Officers complained about the evening hours, the beer-drinking and smoking that was required to gain the trust of machine operators, and the lackluster payoff of busting a person guilty of nothing more than a low-level gambling charge. The details worked, however, and most operators charged with a pinball-related crime were convicted. The penalty was usually a small fine.

In 1944, the state supreme court ruled that pinball, with or without payout, was a form of gambling. Enforcement of the existing laws again pinball in Milwaukee had become increasingly lax and, despite a shutter over potential impact of this ruling, it seems that the MPD remain focus only on machines that paid out.

But into the 1950s, the definition of a “payout” became trickier. Many machines now masked winnings as “free games,” won by players for reaching certain point milestones. A man might sit at a barroom machine all night, running up 40-50 free games. Theoretically, the man could keep playing until he exhausted each ball. But he could also “cash in” these games to the bar, getting a payout of a nickel or dime for each unplayed game. The introduction of flippers made things even more complicated. Pinball’s status as a form of gambling was rooted it being a game of chance, rather than skill. Even the most experience players could do little to guide the ball with just the plunger, but flippers introduced a true skill element to play. Pinball remained technically illegal, but little was done to enforce the law.

Milwaukee was not alone in its campaigns against pinball. Many cities and municipalities waged similar battles and passed laws against the game. Pinball was illegal in New York City until 1976, with Mayor Fiorello La Guardia even helping police to smash machines with a sledgehammer. Pinball was banned in Los Angeles in 1939 and not legalized until a state supreme court ruling there in 1974.

In 1963, the Wisconsin supreme court ruled free plays on pinball machines were illegal, although there remained little enforcement behind the law. They would remain so until 1980 – near the height of the video arcade craze – that the state finally legalized free plays.